Paper-Back Planters: Recycling Books to Pot Indoor Plants

Have books finally met their match with the Apple iPad, or is it just another fad like the Amazon Kindle? Readers may find some poetry in these volumes regardless of whether they are willing to give up their favorite paperback companions: potted plants put into scooped-out sections of beautiful old hardback books.

Gardenkultur (via Inhabitat) makes a simple recycling project out of even the most complex novels, but carving into the heart of a book, sealing off the resulting space and putting seeds of little trees or other plant life into the curved void. Of course, this would work just as well as a do-it-yourself gardening project for those green-thumbed enough to provide proper moisture barriers for their own plants.

But if a picture is said to be worth one thousand, at how many words do we value a wee plant? For some of us, though, it may be hard to see what looks like the defacement or destruction of a book taking place, but perhaps it is better that some of the vast volumes of the world are at least transformed into an intentional green habitat than simply being left to grow mold on their own in a closet.

Hopefully these books were beyond repair and those ripe only for reuse. If you try to make them yourself to fill with light-leaved little trees, fluffy ferns or small and steadfast cacti, just make sure the seeds will not outgrow their new literary stronghold when the plants grow up. Only time will tell whether these will be bestsellers that take root and grow into a trend – perhaps for the true bibliophiles they will fall short, fail and wither like so many green genres and eco-friendly designs of the recent past.